Somerville Spotlight: William Caruso founds nonprofit Bonobo Nation

Caruso is the proud founder of Bonobo Nation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness about bonobos, a highly endangered species. The organization was formed in October 2016 and is hoping to make a local impact.

Bonobos can only be found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and because of the hostile political climate, relatively little information has been available in the past.

“Everyone seems to know chimpanzees. Everyone seems to know gorillas. Everyone seems to know orangutans,” said Caruso. “But bonobos only have a recognition of about 15 percent. One of the fundamental threats to bonobos is human ignorance - we don’t even know.”

A love of bonobos

Caruso studied philosophy and English literature at the Franciscan Seminary College in New York in 1974 before receiving his law degree from Northeastern in 1989. From there he studied environmental science at UMass Boston and received his master’s in education from Emmanuel College in 2004.

The lawyer-turned-teacher discovered a love of bonobos after his wife took an introductory course about the history of science at Harvard University. When they hosted professor Nadine Weidman for dinner, a topic of conversation was anthropological views of mankind, which led to the discussion of chimpanzees and bonobos.

“The professor got me interested in the subject,” he explained. “Relatively little was known ... [there was] a lot of reading on my part ... there are a number of significant researchers in the field who helped me appreciate the data and understanding about the species and the endangered status.”

Caruso has read everything about bonobos, from Frans de Waal’s studies to Ian Parker’s piece in the New Yorker. He reached out to academics, to other nonprofits, zoos, and more.

Chimpanzees vs. Bonobos

Many studies, said Caruso, have been centered around chimpanzees and their relations to human beings. But, he explained, bonobos are just as closely related to humans and studying them can teach us more about ourselves.

However, he stressed, chimpanzees and bonobos are very different. In fact, he added, critically different.

For one, chimpanzees are male-dominated while bonobos are typically female-dominated, and are less prone to violent behavior.

“We would, as human beings, learn a lot more and benefit, generally, as seeing ourselves more in the round, not just as this male-dominated, prone to violence, pack of chimps,” explained Caruso.

Within the bonobo community, hunting is a shared activity, though most are vegetarian. They build social relationships and practice sexual activity on a regular basis with a number of partners, not just male and female. Though acts of aggression have occurred, bonobos are typically peaceful creatures, explained Caruso.

Bonobos, he said, have “morality...fairness, compassion and empathy,” just like humans.

Chimpanzees, on the other hand, are typically aggressive animals. For example, said Caruso, they fling feces at one another and get into physical altercations.

Looking forward

Since founding Bonobo Nation in 2016, Caruso has been trying to raise awareness.

“I’m hoping with a little bit of visibility and education we can attract libraries and local high schools and community colleges to schedule talks here and there to really reach a much broader campaign,” he said. “I want to engage people with this project, with this mission.”

Unfortunately, he said, there is a lot of work to be done to protect bonobos, with the destruction of their rainforest homes, hunting, and the political climate in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Congo War has been traumatizing for both human and bonobo residents, said Caruso.

“The estimates of fatalities between direct killing and famine and disease raise anywhere from 3 to 6 million,” he explained. “Some contemporary historians call it the third world war...one of the ten bloodiest conflicts in human history.”

However, residents have taken it upon themselves to protect the Lola Ya Bonobo Sanctuary, which Caruso is thankful for.

“Residents are actually the ones who are responsible for the sanctuaries and paying for seeing that those sanctuaries are not violated,” he said.

Hopefully though, he said, he’ll be able to make it there in the near future and finally meet a bonobo, face-to-face.